Day 21 -- Orlando, FL
Wednesday 7/18/2001
Excursion: Disney MGM Studios
We got up early and ate breakfast at the trailer. Today's excursion would take us to another big Disney Park: MGM Studios. You have to take two different buses to get there from the campground. We had planned to be there for the early bird special, but did not get there until 5 minutes after nine when the park opens up for everyone else. Shortly after we arrived we set a meeting point and then broke up into two groups: I walked with Erik, while Lilly took Isabella and Karl. My first stop with Erik was to grab Fast Pass tickets for the Tower of Terror. We then took off to get in line for the Star Wars ride. That ride is quite fun. We also rode the Holloywood movie ride. It was good, but not great.
We then walked around for a bit and then got back to the Tower of Terror. You get to drop 13 stories in an elevator. Quite a thrill. You first have to walk through a scary basement of a large early 1900s building. Erik liked this ride a lot. He wanted to get back in line immediately, but we needed to get back to meet up with the others. Unfortunately we had to wait for about 45 minutes until they showed up, late.
Tower of Terror -- a 13 story drop in an elevator
We rode the Star Wars ride together and then enjoyed the Muppet 3D show. The latter one is just great. They mix the 3D effects with real items, such as live muppet actors coming out on stage and water coming down from the cieling when they squirted with a water flower against the audience or soap bubbles falling on the audience when soap bubbles were made in the 3D movie. The old mupped guys were there on the balcony, injecting snide remarks. Quite funny.
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We then tried out the Honey I shrunk the kids playground. Here kids can play amongst over sized grass, bugs and other items. There are things to climb, lots of little caves and slides. It was warm even though they were using fans to help cool things down. But the sun was also shining. The kids liked this place very much, despite the heat. After that we ate ice cream. I ordered a rootbeer float!
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Click on pictures above to enlarge
We then walked off to enjoy the Indiana Jones show. We had Fast Passes for this, but were somewhat surprised to learn that the Fast Pass line was longer than the regular line. That was a bit of an illusion. The seating area is huge and 90% of the seats were taken by us with Fast Passes. The show is quite nice. It shows the inners of making a movie and uses changing scenery. They also used 9 volunteers from the audience to help out being extras. Actually, one of them was a member of the crew but he played a really stupid extra from the audience. Quite funny. The show itself played parts of one of the Indiana Jones movies, with fire, guns, fights, etc. Definitely worth attending.
Tons of stuffed little Minnies in the store
We then got ready to leave. Took a few pictures on our way out. It was now approaching 4:30pm and we'd been at the theme park for 7 1/2 hours. We had all had a great day. Everyone was feeling tired. As we approached the bus station, it started to rain very hard. We just had enough time to get our rain gear on. Others were not so fortunate. A bus stopped, but we were far enough back in the line to not get on it. But five minutes later another bus came by and we were able to get on. As I sat in the seat and looked out I could see several people without raingear, standing in the pouring rain outside. On the upside, the rain is warm and you do not really get cold (until you step into the air conditioned bus). When we got back to the trailer we ate dinner inside the trailer and watched some TV. We went to bed early.
A final pose before leaving; rain started 10 minutes after this